The following year Charleston was invaded by a French and Spanish squadron. But though the town was suffering at the time from yellow fever, the colonists, aided by the Huguenots, who fought for their old quarrel, bravely defended the place and repelled the invaders with great loss. D’Iberville was at Havanna preparing for a new attack on Charleston, when he died.
The consequences of the European war were terrible in Massachusetts. The broken eastern tribes settled in two villages, Becancour and St. Francis, were encouraged by the Jesuits priests to make continual inroads on the English; and now that peace existed between the Five Nations and the French, the whole force of Canada was directed against the New England frontiers.
In vain had a congress of chiefs assured Governor Dudley at Casco, that “the sun was not further from the earth than were their thoughts from war with the English;” six weeks afterwards, led on by the French, war-parties ranged over the whole country, carrying terror and devastation wherever they came.
It was winter, a season favourable to Indian warfare, and the snow lay deep on the ground, when Hertelle de Rouville, with 200 French, and 142 Indians, surprised the little town of Deerfield in the dead of night, being able to pass the palisades which defended the place, owing to the depth of the snow. Our readers are sufficiently familiar already with the horrors of Indian warfare; we will not, therefore, go through the terrible details. The village, with the exception of the church and one dwelling-house, was set on fire and wholly destroyed; but few of the inhabitants escaped; forty-seven were killed, and 120 carried into captivity. Among these latter were the Rev. John Williams, the minister of the place, his wife and five children, two being among the murdered. Eunice, the wife, who was in delicate health, carried her Bible with her and endeavoured to find comfort in its pages for her companions in affliction; on the second day of their terrible march, however, being unable to keep up with the party, she was struck dead with the tomahawk. Her body, left at the foot of a hill, was found by some of the remnant of Deerfield, and reverently interred in the burial-ground of that place. Her husband was afterwards laid by her side, and their grave stones long marked the spot. The youngest daughter, but seven years old at the time of this domestic tragedy, was adopted into a family of praying Indians near Montreal, and became so deeply attached to her new friends that nothing could induce her to leave them. She afterwards became the wife of a chief, and in later years visited her family and friends, then restored to Deerfield, in her Indian dress; but though every inducement was used to prolong her stay, and a fast was held in the village, with prayer for her deliverance, she returned, after a few days, to her own wigwam and the love of her own Mohawk children.[[25]]
Terror and dismay spread through New England; and the veteran Benjamin Church, roused by these horrors, rode seventy miles to offer his services to Dudley, governor of Massachusetts, on behalf of his suffering fellow-citizens. Accordingly, at the head of 500 soldiers, he ascended the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers, and destroyed several Indian towns and took many prisoners.
In 1705, Vaudreuil, then governor of Canada, proposed to Dudley a treaty of neutrality, and an exchange of prisoners took place, at which time John Williams and his family, with the exception of the one child we have mentioned, together with the other inhabitants of Deerfield, were restored.
War, however, soon broke out again. In 1707, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, having raised the means by the issue of bills of credit, joined New England in an enterprise against Acadia. A thousand men, therefore, under Colonel March, entered the river in an English frigate, and landed before the town of Port Royal. Not being able to take the fort for want of cannon, they burned the town, killed the cattle, and destroyed the harvests by cutting the dams in the river and overflowing the land. From Port Royal they advanced along the coast, committing all the depredations in their power. The next year, the French retaliated. Hertelle de Rouville, descending the Merrimac, reached the devoted village of Haverhill, not far from Boston. We have already related the sorrows of this place, and the heroism of some of its inhabitants, and again similar scenes were witnessed. Haverhill stood in the midst of the primeval forest, near the Merrimac, and a new meeting-house, the pride of the place, stood in the centre of the village. On the night of the 29th of August, the inhabitants resigned themselves to repose, unconscious that in the neighbouring forest lay the savage Hertelle de Rouville and his men, and who, an hour before daybreak, having solemnly prayed, rushed into the village, bearing with them the terrors and horrors of Indian warfare. The village was set on fire. Benjamin Rolfe, the minister, and his wife and children, were cruelly murdered, as well as about fifty others, while the same number were carried away captive. Many instances of the heroism of the women are related. Mrs. Swan defended her house, her husband and family, with an iron spit three yards long. The wife of John Johnson, who had fled to the garden with her child in her arms, after the murder of her husband in the house, contrived, as she fell mortally wounded, to hide the infant, which was found alive at her breast when the massacre was over. Mary Wainwright, whose husband was among the first killed, unbarred her house-door, apparently willingly, at the bidding of the savage enemy, and asking them civilly what they wanted, and being told money, went out, as she said, to bring it to them, and gathering up all her children, save one, succeeded in escaping.[[26]]
In the midst of the outrage, rapine, and bloodshed, a brave man, named Davis, was heard shouting, as if to multitudes of people, “Come on! come on! we will have-them!” And the enemy, believing that a large body of troops was advancing, made a hasty retreat soon after sunrise, carrying with them a number of prisoners, several of whom however, were rescued by Samuel Ayer, a bold village champion, and a few others, who pursued them, though Ayer himself perished in the enterprise. A mound in the village grave yard marks to this day the resting-place of the unhappy victims.
“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the sorrows of that generation.” And the reader may say, in the words of Peter Schuyler, in his remonstrance to the Marquis de Vaudreuil: “My heart swells with indignation when I think that a war between Christian princes, bound to the exactest laws of honour and generosity, which their noble ancestors have illustrated by brilliant examples, is degenerating into a savage and boundless butchery!”
The atrocities of this warfare inspired the English colonists with still deeper abhorrence of the French missionaries, and led to the design of exterminating the Indians, which otherwise might not have been entertained. As it was not possible to carry on regular warfare with the Indians, who shifted their abodes at the approach of the enemy, a bounty of ten pounds for every Indian scalp was offered to the regular troops, and to volunteers the sum was doubled, while as much as fifty pounds per scalp was promised to parties who should gratuitously scour the forests for Indians, that the whole land might be cleared of them, as countries were in the old times cleared of wild beasts.